after bella asked me about
girls and bras a few weeks back and i had to confess ignorance, i emailed a girl i knew in my elementary school days who has a son around the same age as bella. it read:
hey carrie,
if you help me answer my daughter's questions (
link), i promise to help you with any curve balls your son may throw your way.
troy.
reliable as always, carrie responded, and in great detail, with the following:
The short answer is YES! And the long answer starts way back at Bauder Elementary school in the 5th grade! My guess is 5th grade is closer to 3rd grade in this day and age. It all started with one girl, who shall remain nameless to protect the innocent, who matured, filled out, developed long before the rest of us! Once she got a bra, it started the bra rolling (I mean ball rolling). Then each day someone new came with one, this had nothing to do with whether or not they actually needed one. Let me just say, some of us may not have ever needed one until child birth, but that is another whole story of how children change your life forever! So yes many of the girls followed suit and got bras. The crazy thing is that the girl who started it finished her growth spurt by 6th grade and never got any taller. The rest of the girls who were further behind still grew taller and taller. So what may have seemed like an advantage (1st one to get a bra) turned out to not be such a advantage at all.
then days ago marty was telling me about a friend of ours whose daughter just got a breast bud and how that phase of maturity would be starting for us soon. i first asked marty to describe what a breast bud was. she did. i next asked marty if she meant to say that the girl got just one, and if she still had one budless side. marty said that yes, that is what she said and that is how it tends to happen. marty went on to tell the story of when her first breast bud popped, she was sure it was cancer and remembered specifically thinking about how sad her mom was going to be that one of her daughters was dying.
the blank, lifeless stare i gave marty during my breast bud tutorial was not due to a lack of understanding. it was due to an exaggerated sense of understanding and an immense gratitude that when it all began for me one of the two face-down cards i was dealt had a giant Y on its face.
